Little Black Bag Stows Away $8 Million in Funding for Social Shopping

Little Black Bag, a six-month-old e-commerce company, has raised $8 million in a second round of funding.

The company’s inspiration comes from “fukubukuro,” a Japanese New Year’s Day tradition where merchants sell grab bags filled with unknown objects at substantial discounts. But in this version, shoppers get to buy a mystery bag filled with women’s fashion products — mostly jewelry and purses — and then trade the items they don’t want with others online.

The outcome is a company that offers mix of commerce, game play, and even some marketing, too.

The company’s round was led by GRP Partners, with participation from DCM. In total, Little Black Bag has raised $10.75 million.

Co-founder and CEO Dan Murillo, who was previously a VC at Greycroft, said the company is generating more than 10 million impressions every month across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube, and that, so far, customers have conducted more than one million trades.

In addition to offering a shopping experience for consumers, brands are also using it to market upcoming products. For example, last month, L’Oreal’s Redken brand gave each user one of 11 different product samples, which they were encouraged to trade and post comments about using social meda. The company says the campaign resulted in one million social media impressions.

The newly raised capital will go toward hiring marketing and merchandising execs, and adding new brands to the experience, the company said.

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